Author: David Bodapati

By David Bodapati

Nashik, 5 June 2011: It was a cake walk for speed demon Gaurav Gill of Team MRF (codriver Musa Sherif) as he had to drive only 72.32 kms of special stages on tarmac out of the total of  351.22 kms including transport section to win the season opener Rally of Maharashtra, the first round of the Speed Indian National Rally Championship. The rally run on Super Rally format over three special stages run twice on Saturday and once each on Sunday made for thrilling spectacle and provided a daunting task for the drivers.

With only 5 entires generated in the top 2000N+ class, it was a facile win for Gaurav Gill who was already on top on the first day with a huge difference of over 6 minutes over his teammate Lohith Urs.  The absence of Red Rooster Racing had brought down the competition level of the rally. However, the competition was high despite the less number of competitors and the an incident-packed day saw a lot of  crashes. Arjun Balu and co-driver Sujit Kumar who had multiple flat tyre and later failed to cope up with the suspension problem crashed against a giant tree in the fourth special stage became the first casualty followed by Ashwin Gowda and co-driver Anoop Kumar who had a miraculous escape as they misjudged a curve and overshoot the barriers to take deep dive into 300 feet gorge. After rolling over for at least 14 times they were lucky to be stopped by a tree from a further drop of over 100 feet straight into a rocky water surface. “But for the safe roll-cage that is mandatory in the National championship for all cars, I would not have survived,” said a shattered Anoop Kumar after the rally. Even as his driver Ashwin Gowda, was recuperating in the ambulance he added in jest, “Going down was easy! Walking up the hill was more dehydrating.’’ Hats off to the doctor, who went all the way down in no time and ensured that both the drivers are safely out of the car!

Castrol supported AR Racing team driver Arjun Rao Aroor along with his co-driver Satish Rajgopal who were running second, though not closer enough to Gaurav, experienced power steering brakdown reached the service bay safely but were not able to overcome the problem and dropped out before SS5.

Amittrajit Ghosh with his co-driver Ashwin Naik after these two major incidents had moved up to second place just behind the leader Gaurav Gill and co-driver Musa Sheriff, but their joy was short-lived as their car stalled just three kilometers before the final stage finish.

With three out of the five cars out, it was Lohit Urs with his co-driver Srinivas Murthy who finished second in the class.

Editor of Overdrive Sirish Chandran with co-driver Nikhil Pai topped the 2000N category with a comfortable margin and filled in the gap as overall third as there were only two cars remaining in 2000N+. He was followed by Shailander Hegde and co-driver Prajwal Pai in second position and in the third place were Rahul Kanthraj and co-driver Vivek Bhatt in the N class.

In Group 1600 cc after the crash of Ashwin Gowda,  Aniruddha Rangnekar and co-driver Anjay Kapadia topped the table with a very comfortable margin of over 22 minutes over Vignesh Devarajan and Mukesh Raja.

In the 1400 cc Star Cup, it was Raghu Nandan B with co-driver Sujay Prasad with a timing of 01:04:52 on top followed by Deepak Chetty with co-driver Uday Kumar who clocked 1:06:15. Hrishikesh Thackersey with co-driver Kaushik H Shinde (1:09:00.0) were third.

In the Gypsy class,  the leader was the vetran driver from Bangalore Sanjay Agarwal with co-driver Jeeva Rathinam with a timing of  01:06:28.0 followed by Sachin Singh and co-driver Ramesh Venu (01:07:23.0)  in second place and Ranjiv Sally and co-driver  Faruk Patel (1:10:24.0) in third.

The other casualties of the day were Kochi’s veteran Sob George  and a young co-driver Vineeth Vincent Tom in the 1400 cc class. He failed to negotiate a culvert before a hairpin and nosedived into the pit while in the 1600 cc category Siddharth Rangnekar with co-driver Halley Prabhakar went off the road into a field and halted on top of a small rock. The incident-filled day saw only 19 cars finish Day 1. Gaurav Gill further extended his lead upto 8.03 min after clocking the fastest time in first stage of the second day, but also gave an opportunity to his team mates Lohit Urs and Amitrajit Ghosh to do some of the fastest timings. In the 2000N category there was no change in the positions from the day one. The same places were retained after the second day leader was Sirish Chandran followed by Shailande Hegde and Rahul Kanthraj. It was the similar case in the 1600cc class Pune driver Anirudha Rangnekar of Chettinad Sporting finished ahead of Vignesh Devarajan. In the 1400 cc Star Cup It was a first and second finish for Team Ideal as Raghu Nandan B paired with co-driver Sujay Prasad won the class , Deepak Chetty had Uday as co-driver finished second while Hrishikesh Thackersay and co-driver Kaushik Shinde came third. Veteran rally driver Sanjay Agarwal with Jeeva Rathinam both from Bengaluru driving a modified Gypsy with a Baleno engine were placed first.  In Gypsy cup N & T2 Sachin Singh  and co-driver Venu Ramesh won with a time of 1 hour 40 min, 34 seconds, while Ranjiv Sally and co-driver Farook Patel came second followed by Shafeeq ur Rahman in the third spot. Of the 27 cars that started, only 18 finished the rally.